iPad

iOS

Jailbreak

Cydia

While the iOS home screen is generally simple to navigate in itself, we still continuously look for ways to make it easier to get to certain applications we use on an everyday basis. If you are one of these people, then you may want to refresh your Cydia sources to find a new free jailbreak tweak dubbed SpinTask by iOS developer Ariel Auiz. It even comes loaded with options in its preferences pane from the Settings application.

Illustrated by the screenshot above, you can see the interface of SpinTask. The user has the ability to choose the applications that appear in the interface from the preferences pane. This tweak gives the user the ability to launch up to four applications from literally anywhere in iOS – from the lock screen, from the home screen, or from within applications. The preferences pane for SpinTask is shown in the screenshot below:

Noticeable first-hand would be that SpinTask is an Activator-invoked tweak. We recommend using an Activator action you will be able to invoke from anywhere – for instance, status bar activation methods will not be available from certain places as not every application allows you to view the status bar to use it.

Apart from Activator, the main workings of the tweak involve swipe gestures and tapping. You can use swipes to select the application you want to open (a black box appears around it) and then you can tap on it to launch it. You can use anywhere between one and four fingers to swipe, and you can use anywhere between one and three fingers to tap. After picking your gestures and tap methods, you can pick the four applications that will be visible when you launch the SpinTask interface.

Using SpinTask does take some getting used to – it doesn’t look like anything Apple would want to implement into their operating system both visually and functionally. The interface is fuzzy and not very crisp on the retina display. Sometimes applications don’t launch correctly, however we recommend selecting an application with the swipe gesture before tapping on it as the success rate is higher when doing it that way. Honestly, the App Switcher is a faster application launching method and the tweak is far from perfect, but being that the tweak is free, we can’t help but say you should at least give it a try – you might like it. So what are you waiting for?!

Yeah the selecting then tapping (with the default having you tap multiple times) makes me think of dial phones. A retina interface would be nice. Since the icons are the same size as on the home screen, it doesn't really make sense to require a selection and confirmation method like this.